The Mental Hurdle of How to Trust Your Body Again

Part of the post heart attack anxiety series

People ask about diet, exercise, meds, all the physical stuff you're supposed to fix after a heart attack. Almost nobody asks about the part that actually messed with people the most, which is the mental side of it.

Surviving the thing is one challenge. Believing your body again afterward is a completely different one, and it's a fight nobody really prepares you for. You have an engine, your heart. Just one. You have two kidneys, two arms, two legs, two eyes. But when your heart stops beating, it can really mess with your mind. Your heart is the thing that’s supposed to keep going through every broken arm or every illness.

Your body let you down, and that's just true whether you want to admit it or not. But there's a flip side nobody tells you either, which is that you probably let your body down too, in a bunch of small ways over a long stretch of time. That second part sounds harsh but it's actually the good news, because if you're the one who let it slide, you're also the one who gets to fix it.

That took me a while to wrap my head around.

Maybe if you had a heart attack, it felt like it came out of nowhere for you, no warning, no buildup, just an ordinary day and then everything was different. Or maybe you're younger than you figured you'd be dealing with something like this, and you always assumed there'd be time.Time to fix the diet, get to the gym, get your numbers where they needed to be, eventually. Whichever version is yours, it's valid, and none of it means you failed. It just means you're human, and now you know what you know.

For me, the first year or two was the hard part mentally more than physically. Every weird twinge had me wondering if it was happening again. A skipped heartbeat, some chest tightness that was probably just stress or bad posture, and my brain would go straight to the worst case scenario. Is this it?Am I about to leave my wife and kids without a husband and a dad.

That thought doesn't go away easily, and I'm not going to pretend it does. But you get through it. I did, and you will too, even if it doesn't feel that way right now.

Here's the thing though, there's no silver bullet for the mental side any more than there is for the physical side. It's not one dramatic overhaul that fixes everything overnight. If anything, the dramatic overhauls are usually the wrong move, because they're the ones you can't sustain, and quitting after two weeks does more damage to your confidence than never starting in the first place.

What actually moves the needle is small and kind of boring if I'm being honest. Eating a little better most days, not perfectly, just better than before. Moving your body regularly, even if that's only a walk around the block some days. Physical confidence builds mental confidence.  Actually taking your meds the way you're supposed to and not letting the internet fear monger you, and also getting enough sleep so your body has a shot at repairing itself, and things mentally feel more manageable. None of that makes for a great headline, but it adds up in a way one big dramatic change never does, mostly because you can actually keep doing it.

Somewhere in the middle of all those small things stacking up, you start to notice something shift. You feel a little more like yourself again, and not just physically. The twinges stop feeling like emergencies, the 2am spiral calms down, and at some point you realize you haven't braced for the next one in a while.

It took me time to get there, and it wasn't a straight line. Some days still catch me off guard even now.

If you're in that first year right now wondering whether you're going to make it through the mental side of this, I need you to hear that you will. It takes real work and there's no shortcut through it, but it's not a mystery either. Keep doing the small things and keep showing up for yourself, and the anxiety gets quieter.

Keep doing the physical side of recovery, but don't skip the mental side just because it's harder to talk about. It's just as real, and it deserves just as much attention.

Because you only get one heart. ‘Til next time, Stephen.